Japan gang war fear as crime syndicate ‘splits’

Japanese police are braced for a spike in gang violence, amid reports the country’s biggest organised crime syndicate has split into different factions, Sky News reports.

Kenichi Shinoda, leader of the Yamaguchi-gumi

The division in the Yamaguchi-gumi – the biggest of Japan’s “yakuza” organized crime operations – has been sparked by a plan to move the gang’s headquarters from Kobe to Nagoya, according to The Asahi Shimbun newspaper.